Click on the photo below for credits and context. I’ve never seen VLCC Bay Ridge, but I’d love to see her now as she approaches her 36th year afloat. This will be her last year, as she is currently being scrapped in Aliaga, Turkey, after nearly two decades serving as a FPSO unit off the coast of Angola. Click here for a photo of the Brooklyn built vessel today as well as some controversy involved in the scrapping, as you can read here.

To see this product of skilled Brooklyn labor under tow from Angola to Turkey, click here and scroll not quite halfway through. Finally click here for many more photos of Kuito, ex-Bay Ridge.

Below are two marginally related photos of an FPSO under tow into Rio harbor in July 2013.

For more of my Rio photos, click here or type JR into the search window. Both color photos by Will Van Dorp.

It surprises me sometimes what titles I’ve not re-used. This blog has little grand design; I choose to let to drift serendipitously according to what I see or what you choose to share, and I am grateful to you all for sending along photos and suggestions. Rock Juice the title came out of a conversation some time back with one of you; thanks and I think you know who you are. Here was the first in the series.

Read those place names: Shellsea, Rowboaten, Flushwick, Rikers Reef, and Yankee Aquarium. Then there are landmasses like CUNY Island. The map called NY Sea is the creation of Jeffrey Linn, an Urban Planner/Designer, focusing primarily on walkable communities and Safe Routes to School issues. He writes, “I do a lot of mapping and GIS in my career. These maps are a bit of a tangent, but I’ve always focused on how sea level rise will impact cities, so it fits in well with my urbanist background. What got me interested in creating these maps is a fascination with how landscapes can change over time.” Jeffrey adds that although it can be “depressing for some to look at the maps . . . the place names help to lighten the mood.”

Click on the map itself for more of Jeffrey’s work. I wonder what the sixth boro would look like if there map were extended about 40 miles in either direction. I know Mount Mitchill (scroll) would be the high point of the area. And as water levels rise, there may be a day like Seth Tane captures here in the subway . . .

And vessels currently or recently in the sixth boro . . . I wish I’d gotten a photo of Ernest Hemingway.

And this one . . . Ice Base, which I noticed the first time bowsprit one day when my imagination was working faster than my eyes, and I saw Ice BABE. At least I though I did. Well, previously I had seen and my camera still thinks it saw Surfer Rosa!

Then last week . . I saw Charles Oxman venture into the Kills for the first time in ages with destination Casablanca. Seriously, I thought it had been sold foreign! In fact it was headed to the newly dubbed Rio Blanco, a fitting moniker for the frozen North River, which appears only briefly some years.

As I write this from just west of Murky City and Bergen Bar . . . I am grateful to Jeffrey Linn for use of his intriguing maps, another of which you can see here.

I hope it ends soon. Of course, ice is just a part of the sixth boro cycle. See the ice photos here from 2009. Enjoy these shots from the last day of February 2015. But for the hot days sure to come later this year, how about this tall tale of Meagan Ann traveling through the icebergs of New York. In her early years, Meagan Annoperated in Alaskan waters.

And the next few from Fred Trooster and Jan Oosterboer and taken in Amazonehaven section of the port of Rotterdam less than a week ago . . . the giant Thalassa Elpida assisted into the dock by FairPlay 21. The two smaller boats are the line handlers.

Click here for a post I did four years ago showing FairPlay 21 nearly capsizing.

I was about to put up a different post–that’ll be for tomorrow–when Jonathan Steinman sent along these photos. As I post this, tug Challenger is eastbound on the East River, approaching Hell Gate. The question on Jonathan’s mind, as well as mine and maybe yours . . . what is that assemblage balanced on the barge?